Triage is a process for sorting injured or ill people into groups based on their need for or likely benefit from immediate medical treatment. Triage is used on the battlefield, at disaster sites, and in hospital emergency rooms when limited medical resources must be allocated.
Triage protocols (sometimes referred to as “symptom charts”) have been created to assist medical providers and patients in determining what medical treatment, if any, should be received given a set of medical conditions. For example, a triage protocol for dehydration in a young pediatric patient (e.g., birth-6 yrs.) may consist of a listing of symptoms and considerations that correspond with different levels of concern. If the symptom listing and considerations indicate that the patient has emergent symptoms (i.e., symptoms that demand immediate action), then the triage protocol may indicate that the patient should seek immediate treatment (e.g., 0-60 minutes). If the symptom listing and considerations indicate that the patient has urgent symptoms, then the triage protocol may indicate that the patient should seek treatment or be seen by a medical provider for further diagnosis within 1-8 hours. If the symptom listing and considerations indicate that the patient has acute symptoms, then the triage protocol may indicate that the patient should seek treatment or be seen by a medical provider for further diagnosis within 8-24 hours.
Triage protocols or symptom charts are typically arranged in chart format. However, the triage protocol may be configured to appear in a flowchart format for easier use by the medical provider or the patient. Examples of flowchart-type symptom charts for over 100 different potential medical conditions are illustrated in the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide, published by Simon & Schuster, Copyright ©1999 by President and Fellows of Harvard College (Anthony L. Komaroff, MD, Editor in Chief).
Triage protocols are widely used by medical facilities in responding to telephone calls from patients. This service is referred to as teletriage. Teletriage is often provided by call center services staffed by specially trained registered nurses (RN's) or doctors who can provide reliable information to individuals with questions or concerns about a medical situation. A medical plan may offer teletriage as a plan benefit.
The medical industry is slowly adopting automated tools for delivering medical services to patients. U.S. Pat. No. 5,594,638 (Iliff) describes a computerized medical diagnostic and treatment advice system that operates over a telephone network. In one feature of the system, a patient uses an automated telephone system to answer a series of screening questions related to their medical condition. After the screening questions are completed, the system software determines if the patient has a serious medical condition that requires immediate intervention. If so, then the system instructs the patient to seek immediate medical attention. Otherwise, the system software branches to other paths, such as an evaluation path. The algorithm that determines if a serious medical condition exists, as well as the message that the patient receives upon such a determination, may be customized by the entity that provides the service to its patients.
The current trend in medicine is to provide Internet-based tools to improve communication between patients and medical providers, and to enable patients to become active participants in the management of their health. Flowchart-based triage protocols are an excellent resource that can be provided to patients via an electronic network, such as the Internet. However, each medical provider has specific constraints that it must impose on its patients. Thus, if flowchart-based triage protocols are to become more widely used, they must have the ability to be customized on many different levels and at a high degree of granularity. In this manner, the protocols can be tailored more specifically to the availability of medical provider resources, as well as the clinical practice patterns of the providers. Thus, the protocols can become a business tool for the medical provider, as well as a useful resource for the patient. The present invention fulfills such a need.